Devils-Kings Stanley Cup tickets pricey, but less than Devils-Rangers playoff games

It’s going to cost you lots to attend Wednesday’s Stanley Cup Finals Game 1 at the Prudential Center — but likely not as much as it did for seats at the last two Devils-Rangers playoff games in Newark in the previous round.

There aren’t any tickets left at the box office. But the average price being paid for a ticket on the secondary ticket market for Wednesday’s game against the Los Angeles Kings was $459.33 as of Tuesday afternoon, according to Chris Matcovich, a spokesman for ticket resale analysis site TiqIQ.com. That is less than the $474.34 average price paid for Game 6 on Friday, when the Devils wrapped up their Eastern Conference finals series against the Rangers. Fans paid even more — $486.10 on average — for Game 4 of that same series.

Bottom line: the extra allure of the Stanley Cup Finals isn’t quite enough to overcome the fact that while many Rangers fans could take a short train ride to a game Newark, most Kings fans would have to fly cross-country to attend their team’s road games. So Devils fans have far less competition for seats in this round.

The average “get-in-the-door” price for Game 1 on the overall secondary ticket market as of Tuesday afternoon was $181, Matcovich said. That refers to the cheapest price available for a ticket where at least one adjacent seat also is available.

Fans who resisted the urge to buy Game 1 tickets right after the Devils reached the Finals on Friday night benefited greatly if they waited a few days. On resale ticket giant Stubhub.com, it cost $319 to “get in” 15 minutes after that game ended — but by Tuesday afternoon, the price for such upper-level “nosebleed” seats on Stubhub was just $184.

The Los Angeles Kings have never won a Stanley Cup since entering the National Hockey League in 1967, while the Devils — after moving to New Jersey from Denver in 1982 — won the Cup in 1995, 2000 and 2003. That may help explain why the average price paid for any of the four potential Devils home games, at $835.62, is more than 50 percent lower than the $1,296.47 being paid on average for Kings home games in the series.

Looking to save up your money for a Game 7 in Newark, if the series goes the distance? Fans are paying an average of $1,499.17, and it would cost you $539 just to get in the building, as of Tuesday.

The average price for all games in the Devils-Kings series is $1,013, considerably lower than the $1,437.77 paid for last season’s Finals between the Vancouver Canucks and Boston Bruins, who won the title. That’s because ticket purchases on the secondary market to Canucks games in hockey-mad Canada to see a potential first championship for Vancouver averaged a whopping $2,264.29.